Published 4:00 am, Monday, August 9, 2010

In a nutshell: It's YouTube for documents, books and personal writing.

Cool factor: Scribd.com allows anyone to upload documents to the Web for broad consumption. It can be used for existing publications to distribute documents to a wide audience. But it's also good for budding writers to get their works out to a large audience. Users can read from a PC browser or from a mobile device.

Note: There are some 50 million readers who engage each other through uploaded documents and recommend things to each other. Most documents are free, though there is a store where writers can sell their works.

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